13 months, and our weekend

Henry is now 13 months old.

In the last month, a few things have changed. Henry's play is developing more. He can build a tower of three blocks by himself. He has great aim and likes to throw small toys into containers. He loves riding around in the new wagon Santa brought, and he has gotten good at making his cars and trucks go down  the ramp in his garage. Henry is in the filling and dumping stage, enjoying filling containers with toys and dumping them out to do it again. He is understanding cause and effect more, too.

Henry has become more purposefully affectionate. Today we were sitting on the floor playing, and he stood up, put his arms around my neck, and gave me a real hug! He kept hugging for a long time, swaying back and forth. It was the sweetest thing. He has also started laying his head on my shoulder and just resting there, snuggling.

Henry understands a lot of what we say to him. He follows some simple commands, responds to some yes/no questions (like "Do you want...?), and understands different words for things. Henry signs "more" frequently, and he also points to things he wants or wants to talk about. His only consistent words are "mama" and "dada", but he is still randomly imitating words. Each day he will imitate words, or even a two word phrase, very clearly but then won't say it again. He does try to say "more" and "all done", and we have heard him say "wagon" a few times. Henry also babbles and uses jargon with adult intonation, with lots of gestures and facial expressions. He definitely has a lot to say but we don't understand it yet.

We began sleep training four nights ago. Henry had been waking up multiple times some nights, just a couple of times other nights. He would not go back to sleep unless I nursed him or he got a binky, so he had some strong sleep associations and wasn't able to go back to sleep by himself. The first night of sleep training was tough. He woke up and cried a lot because he wasn't used to sleeping without a pacifier, and wasn't used to going back to sleep without nursing. We followed a schedule to go in and pick him up to let him know we were there, but he had to learn to actually fall back asleep by himself. The second night, Henry only woke once and was crying on and off for a while. The third night he made some noises around 3:00 and went back to sleep, and the fourth night he slept all the way through the night without a peep! Hopefully this will continue. The only problem is that he is waking up really early in the morning (like 5:00). Celia used to get up really early too, and gradually started sleeping later. Hopefully Henry will start getting up later at some point.

Henry is not walking by himself yet. He cruises all over the place, and walks easily with something to push. He has stood by himself for a few seconds at a time, but only a few times.

Henry loves music. He dances every time he hears it, no matter what he's doing or what kind of music it is.

On Friday we had Christmas at our house with my family, and we decided my parents would take Celia home with them for a couple days. So yesterday morning they left and it has been just Chris, Henry, and me. Chris and I have both gotten some things done. I got the house all cleaned and we put away the Christmas stuff, we've both played a lot with Henry, and have had time to just relax. It's amazing how much more time you have with just one small person to wrangle. We also got about 12 inches of snow here last night. It's suddenly a winter wonderland. Chris had a lot of snow blowing to do this morning. Part of our driveway is a steep hill and slippery, so he even had to wear snow shoes to get enough traction.

We are about to watch a Downton Abbey episode and have the fire going nice and toasty!